Pirates' Hope

"They've played it on us!" he yelled. "There's only one man in that long-boat, and the others are trying to put something over on Jerry!"

They were; and the trick had almost succeeded when we reached the strip of beach that Dupuyster was defending. The crippled electric launch, propelled by oars, and carrying possibly a dozen men, was half-way across the lagoon, heading straight for the beach, and coming on regardless of Jerry's rifle. Above the din of battle we could hear the shrill, squeaky voice of the fat cook encouraging his men. "Pull on ze oar, mes braves! Sacré tonnerre! eet is but wan man dat shoot ze gon!"

But when we came up there were five more to shoot, and instant and utter demoralization fell upon the attacking force. Shrieks of surrender in half a dozen different languages rent the still night air, and in a mad endeavor to turn the boat an oar was lost overboard.

If our situation had not been so critically desperate, there was enough of the comic-opera element in the frantic attempt to retreat to have brought down the house. As it was, Van Dyck stopped the firing and shouted to the mutineers to come ashore and surrender. Some of the men were evidently sick of their bargain and wanted to quit, but the squeaky cries of the chief robber dominated the tumult, and under a renewal of our bombardment the launch was got around and headed back to the yacht with much splashing and hard swearing. Also, when the goal of safety was reached, we could make out dimly that the accommodation ladder was let down, and that two or three members of the boat's crew had to be helped aboard.

A few minutes after this, we had audible proof of the correctness of Van Dyck's guess about the long-boat and the ingenious ruse to draw us off. The gasoline craft was coming back, as we could determine by the increasing loudness of its exhaust. Following its return to the yacht we were given another little breathing spell, and John Grey's quality of professional curiosity had an opportunity to show itself again.

"I can't understand for the life of me why these fellows should come back here and fight us so desperately for a chance to get ashore," he protested. "You can't make me believe that they're doing it on the strength of a silly yarn that is three hundred years old."

"What do you think about it, Captain 'Lige?" said Bonteck, ungenerously handing the tangle over to Goff.

"I wouldn't put it a mite apast 'em," was the skipper's guarded reply. "There was a good deal o' talk among the men about buried gold-mines and such on the way down from New Orleans. I ain't no gre't hand at the foreign lingoes, myself, but I picked up a word or two here and there."

"I don't more than half believe it, just the same," Grey persisted. "I tell you, these fellows are not fighting for the bare chance of proving or disproving that old story about the Santa Lucia's buried treasure. They've got inside information of some sort, and I'll bet on it."

"Maybe they have," said Goff, in a tone which said plainly that the matter was one not worth worrying about.

Grey got upon his feet.

"We have six of these pirates back here in the woods: why can't we make them talk and tell us what they are trying to do?"

At this, Van Dyck took a hand.

"They would lie about it, as a matter of course," he interjected. "Besides, their particular object doesn't make any vital difference to us. They are here, and our present business is to see to it that they don't get away again – with the yacht."

Grey sat down again, grumbling.

"I don't see that we are getting ahead very fast," he complained. "What in Sam Hill do you suppose they're waiting for now?"

The answer to Grey's impatient query was at that moment coming around the Andromeda's stern. It was the disabled electric launch again this time with only one man in it, and he was sculling it with an oar over the stern, slowly working his way toward the gap in the reef. When it came a bit nearer we could see that the loom of a broken oar had been rigged as a mast in the bow, with a white flag of some sort dangling from it.

"A parley," I said; and Goff grunted acquiescence. But Jerry Dupuyster worked the lever of his rifle to reload.

"Don't shoot, Jerry," Bonteck cautioned in low tones; whereat the emancipated idler chuckled.

"Couldn't if I wanted to, by Jove; the bally cartridges are all gone, what?"

The huge lump of a man in the stern of the launch stopped sculling when he was within easy calling distance of the shore, and the boat lost way.

"Ahoy ze island!" he hailed, in a voice ridiculously out of proportion to his barrel-girthed bigness.

"Get to work with that oar and come ashore!" was Van Dyck's brusque command, to which he added: "We've got you covered."

"Non, non! it ees ze flag of ze truce!" shrilled the voice. And then the fat cook handed out an argument that was much more binding: "Ve haf ze enchineers in ze hold shut up, and eef you shoot wiz ze gon, zey will be keel!"

"Talk it out, then," said Van Dyck. "What do you want?"

"Ve make ze proposal – w'at you call ze proposition. It ees zat you vill all go to ze ozzer end of zis island, immédiatement. W'en you do zat, ve leave you ze long-boat to go 'way, w'erever you like to go. W'at you do wiz Lequat and hees mens?"

"Lequat and his men are where you won't find them in a hurry," was Bonteck's answer. "As to your demand that we go away and let you steal the yacht again, there's nothing doing."

"Sacré bleu! It ees ze – w'at you call heem? – ze ooltimatum. W'en ees come daylight, ve put ze leetle cannon on ze long boat and keel all —oui!"

At this savage pronouncement we held a whispered consultation, the fat pirate sitting back in the stern sheets of the launch and calmly lighting a cigarette. Could we, dare we, take the risk of a daylight bombardment, even though the single piece of artillery were only the yacht's little brass muzzle-loading signal piece, with such iron scraps as the mutineers might be able to find or manufacture for the missiles? It was a dubious question. Though our island was nearly if not quite a mile in length, its greatest width did not exceed four or five hundred yards, and the little gun would easily put it under a cross-fire from either side.

"Have they powder?" I asked of Goff.

"Tain't likely they haven't – with them a-handlin' all that war stuff from the Isle o' Pines."

"But nothing that would answer for grape-shot?"

"Pots and kittles in the galley, and a hammer to smash 'em with," said the old Gloucesterman. "That's good enough, I cal'late."

"Speak up, all of you," said Van Dyck. "Shall I try to drive a bargain with him for the long-boat? If he gives us enough gasoline, we might be able to make Willemstadt, on the island of Curaçao – with fair weather and a smooth sea. That is the nearest inhabited land, but it is something over a hundred-and-fifty-mile run."

Grey was the first to "speak up."

"I have more at stake than any of you," he said, thereby showing that the married lover may be stone blind to all things extraneous to his own particular and private little Eden. "Just the same, I say, fight it out."

"Here, too," echoed Billy Grisdale; and Jerry Dupuyster also came up promptly in his carefully acquired accent: "Ow, I say! we cawn't knuckle down to a lot of bally cooks and sailormen, what?"

"And you, Preble?" queried Van Dyck, turning to me.

I refused to vote, merely saying: "You know I'm with you, either way."

It was Goff's turn, but instead of taking it, he leaned over to whisper hoarsely: "Make him talk some, Mr. Van Dyck; tell him to work his proposition off ag'in, and say it slow. That boat's a-driftin' in, and if it comes a leetle mite nearer – "

Van Dyck stood up and called to the maker of ultimatums.

"State your proposal again, and let us have it in detail. Will you leave a supply of gasoline in the long-boat? Will you give us provisions, and a compass and sextant?"

The fat chef flung his cigarette away and we heard the little hiss of the spark as the water quenched it.

"Ze proposal ees zis: zat you take your fran's and go back to ze ladees. Again I h-ask you w'at you done wiz Monsieur Lequat and hees men?"

"They are here."

"Bien! You vill all go back to ze camp and ze ladees. You vill leave ze prisonaire; aussi, you will leave ze Captain Goff wiz ze rope tie on hees hand and on hees feets. To-morrow you come back on zis place, and you vill find ze longboat wiz ze gasoline, ze provisionments, et ze compass et ze sextant, to make ze voyage to La Guaira, to Curaçao, to anyw'ere you like to gone. Voila! dat ees all."

Again we took hasty counsel among ourselves, and whatever design Goff had been nursing in asking Van Dyck to prolong the parley was frustrated by another turn of the launch's drift. The boat was now edging farther out from the beach. One and all we were for refusing the detailed terms point blank, if for no other reason than that we were required to leave one of our number bound and at the mercy of the mutineers; one and all, I say, but Goff himself said nothing.

"We can't consider the proposal in its entirety for a minute," said John Grey, voicing the sentiments of at least five of us. But now Goff cut in.

"You're my owner, Mr. Van Dyck: if I could have a little over-haulin' of things with you – "

Van Dyck promptly went aside with the skipper. They didn't go so far but what we could hear their voices – though not the words – and Goff seemed to be doing all the talking, and to be doing it very earnestly. But when they came back, as they did very shortly, it was Bonteck who told us the outcome.